The European Commission initiated a process aimed to enhancing the digital skills and media of European citizens. To reach that objective the EC has developed a series of investigations -“Promoting Digital Literacy” (2004), “Study of the current trends and approaches on Media Literacy in Europ”e (2007), and “Study Assessment Criteria for Media Literacy Levels. A comprehensive view of the concept of Media Literacy and an understanding of how media literacy levels in Europe should be assesed” (2009)-. A comprehensive view of the concept of Media Literacy and an understanding of how media literacy levels in Europe should be asses "(2009) - which resulted in the need to establish indicators for measuring and comparing media literacy.

This paper describes the research developed to measure the media competences, regarded as the ultimate goal of media literacy, that is the critical understanding competence, which involves the ability to search, select, and analyze the information and content, and understanding the media environment, as well as the economic and social development in which those contents are created and spread.

The work explains the grounding base and the methodology used to propose a series of indicators to assess the skills of critical media users, that is, the cognitive processes related with understanding and evaluate the digital media content.

It describes the process to obtain existing indicators that explains media literacy, and detail requirements for the creation of new reliable indicators and parameters for assessing the level of media literacy. Due to the work is about cognitive processes, it is not a study of observable or measurable assessing processes, but it is an assessment of attitudes towards different media and different media scenarios.

The need to assess the levels of understanding critical of the media has been widely recognized, in studies such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which has included –in the assessment of 2009- the measurement of the competences of young people to manage their selves in the digital society.


On the other hand, the European Commission has also recognized the importance of knowing the abilities of citizens of develop their selves in the new technological environment; and this has been highlighted by the interest to implement it in a European level, the indicators are proposed in order to know the trends of media literacy in Europe.